by Christine Sandor

Created on: February 08, 2009   Last Updated: February 14, 2009

She was, no she is, the most important person ever to touch my life. I recall seeing her when I was a little girl. I wandered the department store, the only one in our small town, waiting for my birth mother to get out of work. Chris used to come in the store a lot. I don't know what attracted me to her. She was a lovely British woman with the reddest hair I had ever seen. I lived in an abusive home and I used to follow Chris around the store, hiding behind counters and in clothing racks wishing that she would spot me, say "Oh what a sweet little girl.. I think I will take her home to be mine." But she did not see me watching her.

Years later at the age of 13 I joined a summer theatre group. Things still were awful at home and I loved the idea of being able to escape each day during the summer, ride my bike the 2 miles to the middle school and being in this drama group as we prepared to perform Alice in Wonderland. When I walked in that first day, Chris was there. One day, early on in our activities, I came in quite upset about events of the morning in my "home." Chris apparently saw me go to an empty classroom, crying. She followed me. When I looked up and saw her in the doorway, she said nothing. She simply walked over and held me. I sobbed for a few minutes then looked up at her beautiful face, filled with love and compassion. I was shocked. She was crying. I asked her why she was crying. She said: "Because you are, Lovey"

Chris became my "other mother." For the next thirty years, she was the one I turned to about anything and everything. She was always there. She held me if I cried, she laughed with me and danced with me. She was "the mother of the bride" at my wedding. She was the "grandmother" to my children. She used to joke when introducing me to people that I was her "Unadopted adopted daughter."

The day I called her to tell her my third child was growing inside of me, she hesitated and then told me that something was growing in her as well... Cancer. Two years later the next call came. Her son's wife, Pam was on the other line. "I have been trying to get hold of you for a week. Mum's in a hospice. There isn't much time. YOU have to come NOW."

When I arrived her bedside, I did not recognize her. The entire family was there. Her brother and sister, their spouses and children, Chris' children were there, their spouses and their children, extended family arrived. Everyone agreed, Chris had waited for me. She was not going to leave until I had chance to say

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